Just curious about this statement. I'm not saying u r wrong, I'd just like to know if u can point to some article that proves this because I would like to see how big the disparity is if what u r saying is true. It isn't important enough for me to do the leg work myself so I didn't look at all schools. I did however compare the athletic websites of Minnesota and Georgia. Obviously SEC schools are not gonna have hockey so toss that sport out the window. I see the same sports on both websites except Minnesota has rowing and wrestling which Georgia doesn't have, but Georgia has equestrian which Minnesota doesn't list. At least between these two schools there doesn't seem to be much difference overall.
Looking at specific sports overcomplicates it. Georgia has 18 sports, LSU has 16. Minnesota has 23. Miss St (picked at random) has 15. Tennessee (again picked at random) has 14. Florida has 19.
After looking that up, I went searching and Wiki lays it out pretty nicely. The Big Ten has a total of 149 men's sports and 176 women's sports. The SEC has 118 men's sports and 148 women's sports. So, on average, there are are 4.2 more sports per B1G school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeastern_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ten_Conference
This disparity increases if you look at sports the schools participate in outside of the B1G, like women's hockey. There are 25 such school-sport combos in the Big Ten, but only 14 in the SEC. I'd also have to think that expenses for women's hockey (popular in B1G) are much higher than those for rifle (popular in SEC). I'm not sure where LSU does their beach volleyballing, but I can't imagine it costs as much to maintain as the ice sheet at Ridder.
Almost all female athletes will be on scholarship to balance out the Title IX restrictions. If you say that's 10 per team, and assume it's even $30K per year per scholarship, this adds up pretty quickly. This, of course, is to say nothing of the travel, equipment, staff, coaches, etc. This article lists some of the random sports' salaries and they range between $75k and $150k.
http://www.twincities.com/ci_22742857/eight-other-gophers-coaches-received-contract-extensions-2012
I'm making this up, but I'd think your average non-revenue sport has at least $500k/year in expenses, all-told. At ~5 sports per school, that's $2.5M. And I have to think I know where most SEC schools are spending that money.
I will admit that this is only part of the disparity. I would also guess that the donors at those SEC schools give a higher percentage of their money to the athletics department rather than to the University itself. Again, speculation, but I'd also think that more Big Ten athletic departments give money back to the University too.
